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The leader of the US Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 US presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.
“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”
Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Tuesday May 05 2015, @08:35PM
It would be interesting to list the failure modes, if failure is certain. Just channeling my inner engineer.
I can only think of 2:
1) For stuff that doesn't matter and constituencies that don't deserve representation, they might be dumb enough to vote for who ever spends the most money. This will mostly affect dogcatcher races and the like.
2) It sounds almost unimaginable given the amount of money already sloshing around, but if a campaign ran out of money they might accept what boils down to bribes. But that doesn't change policy because they're already infinitely corrupt. I mean, the senator from Citibank isn't suddenly going to decide to be a crook TODAY.
I donno... it just sounds like a .gov dept where if they disappeared, perhaps abducted by aliens in UFOs, quite possibly no one will ever notice.
Or rephrased, applying an engineering eye, assuming by a miracle they became effective rather than going away the primary effect would be...
1) More paperwork and rules to follow so less talking about issues or whatever it is a democracy is supposed to do
2) Bribes never go away but will be better hidden, and being better hidden the public will be less well informed
Doesn't sound that awful...